What are some good ways to ask if someone is familiar with a subject without accidentally sounding condescending?
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I appreciate wanting to make sure everyone has all the relevant background info needed for a discussion, but it's so easy to come off as intimidating or rude in that context
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I'm also interested in this, the best I've got is something like: "Can you tell me something about your background this area? I don't want to over-explain if you're already super familiar with this area"
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Or on Twitter: "Before I respond, did you read the paper?"
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I also struggle with this. I'll often just be honest like "I'm trying to figure out how best to discuss this. What do you know about << some important term >>?" and then just go from there.
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and quite often they know more about << some important term >> than I do so I start asking them questions.
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I regularly try to stop myself before I go into an explanation, and ask anyone to interrupt me if I’m explaining something they already know. It’s not perfect but it has helped a lot.
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Either that or “I’m going to talk through this to make sure we are on the same page, but please let me know if I should skip ahead or if I am missing something.” Opens the floor to make sure we agree on fundamentals of a problem and catch my own mistakes!
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